S&P weighs in on PA budget: It's unbalanced

In response to Gov. Tom Wolf’s line-item veto Dec. 29 of much of the Republican-passed state budget, we cited ongoing third-party concerns about the state’s fiscal management as a way of cutting through the political rhetoric with an unbiased perspective.

That same day, Standard & Poor’s issued another indictment, or dire warning if you will, essentially siding with the governor. It should put to rest any public sentiment that both sides – or the governor – are to blame for the budget impasse and the state’s fiscal mess.

Republican lawmakers are ducking their sworn responsibility and misleading the public about how fiscally responsible they are and how they’re guarding taxpayers’ money from a free-spending liberal governor.

What they’re trying to save are their political hides, by continuing to spread the bogus message that we can have everything we want without paying for it. If that statement makes you angry, we hope you’ll keep reading, and then ask your local representatives some pointed questions.

All state taxpayers should be deeply concerned about S&P’s reaction, even though the agency didn’t start the ball rolling on any further credit action at this time. Here are some quotes from the S&P release:

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Despite six months of deliberations, Pennsylvania’s budget deliberations continue, leaving it uncertain whether legislators will act to close the state’s budget gap or address its long-term pension liabilities.

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The $30.3 billion budget passed by both the house and senate is, in our view, structurally unbalanced and does not include pension reforms negotiated in the previously agreed-upon budget framework. As proposed, the budget had a $500 million budget gap for fiscal 2016 and left a $2 billion budget gap for fiscal 2017.

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The release of emergency aid to schools will help relieve Pennsylvania schools’ cash flow pressures, but we … still consider state aid payments to be unreliable given the state’s chronic failure to pass an on-time budget.

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As the state’s longest running budget impasse persists, the question of lawmakers’ political willingness to address fiscal challenges remains.

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That’s an unbiased third party’s words, not a “liberal” governor’s, not a “liberal’ newspaper’s. S&P makes the same points as Gov. Wolf did, although state Sen. Rich Alloway, R-Chambersburg, characterized Wolf's statements as "deliberate falsehoods."

Alloway’s response to the governor’s Dec. 29 assertion that the GOP budget is unbalanced was essentially: We’re getting to that. “Claiming that the budget proposal ‘doesn’t add up’ or is ‘out of balance’ is completely absurd and nonsensical given the fact that work is still ongoing on various Code bills,” he said.

Try getting your bank to loan you money by claiming that you’re working on coming up with a way to pay it back.

We need to get past party affiliation and think again about what’s really absurd and nonsensical in the budget mess: As the state’s longest running budget impasse persists, the question of lawmakers’ political willingness to address fiscal challenges remains.

Becky Bennett is the editor of Public Opinion. Email babennett@publicopinionnews.com.